Examines sex differences in English language acculturation and learning strategies among older Vietnamese refugees using data from a national sample. Finds that females had more language problems than males, and that males were more likely than females to use various learning strategies to improve their language skills. (FMW)

Explains how sentence-combining exercises can improve advanced English as a second language (ESL) students' writing. (MM)

The study, involving 48 hearing-impaired (HI) students, found that HI middle school students using microcomputers to telecommunicate with other hearing-impaired students tended to outperform (in language skills) HI students telecommunicating with normal hearing peers and HI control group students receiving microcomputer instruction without…

The study found that teachers of students with severe disabilities can be taught to use a time delay procedure within their normal classroom routine and that the use of delay may have beneficial effects on their students' speech, such as increased mean length of utterance, responsivity, and movement along a continuum of spontaneity. (Author/DB)

Examines the predictive relations among symbolic play, the use of metalinguistic verbs and emergent literacy for preschool children. Describes different regression models for older and younger children and suggests that L.S. Vygotsky's and David Olson's theories of literacy are developmentally complementary. (KEH)

Examined whether speech rate is related to the amount recalled and if developmental increases in speech rate allow faster rehearsal with age, and hence, greater recall. Found that the group relationship was clear and replicable but that speech rates of individual children were not good predictors of those children's memory spans; age was found to…

This study compared 56 early and nonearly readers (matched individually on sex, age, and preschool and kindergarten attended) in terms of their language concepts and skills, as well as their reading achievement, in kindergarten through second grade. The early readers were found superior to nonearly readers on preschool measures of general language…

Disfluent phenomena such as pauses, hesitations, and repairs are investigated in 42 short samples of spontaneous speech of native French speakers and learners of French. It is found that native speakers attend to the construction of the referent, whereas learners are more concerned with syntactic construction. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/LB)

Command of transitivity permutations in Hebrew, where a change in verb-argument syntax entails a change in verb morphology, were examined in 30 children aged 2, 3, and 8. Findings have implications for the development of derivational morphology, item-based versus class-based learning, and the impact of lexical productivity and language-particular…

Evaluates the Turkish language reform in a language planning framework, showing the sociocultural, political, and linguistic reasons leading to this movement and describing the processes and the outcome of this undertaking, which changed the Turkish language and shaped its subsequent development. Special emphasis is given to the process of corpus…

This study examined nonstandard syntactic and morphological forms used by 45 poor, urban, 4- to 5.5-year-old African American children. Distributional analyses revealed three subgroups distinguished by the percentage frequencies of occurrence of utterances containing specific forms and by the predominant types used by each group. (Author)

Teaching techniques that enhance the functional communication skills of children in primary-level classes are presented. The techniques focus on articulation, receptive and expressive language, and auditory processing. The role of the teacher as a communication model is noted. (JDD)

Recognizing that English-as-a-Second-Language students may take seven to eight years to reach proficiency in academic language comparable to the English-speaking peers, this study examined illustrations in Hong Kong, Japanese, Mexican, and Canadian social studies textbooks. Findings that illustrations/graphics are common across languages suggest…

Research is reported showing that children are lexically conservative in the domain of learning argument omissibility. Two studies (one observational case study, one experimental) show a relationship between the argument frames used in input and those used by child subjects. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/LB)

An observational project on children's early literacy examined conditions necessary for growth in literacy; ways children evidence their need for personal control through literacy; the social functions of literacy for young children; and how children manipulate and play with language. (TJQ)